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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28959420">Wish You Were Here</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galadriel1010/pseuds/Galadriel1010'>Galadriel1010</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sherlock (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>5+1 Things, Epistolary, Family, Gen, London, Post-The Final Problem</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 06:16:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,331</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28959420</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galadriel1010/pseuds/Galadriel1010</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In the years after they meet, Sherlock sends postcards. Eurus gradually begins to understand them.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Eurus Holmes &amp; Sherlock Holmes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Chocolate Box - Round 6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Wish You Were Here</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/gifts">Trobadora</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <ol>
<li>Greenwich</li>
</ol><p>
  <em>Greenwich is noted for its maritime heritage, including the Royal Naval College and the Greenwich Meridian. It is now home to the Royal Observatory, the National Maritime Museum and several notable ships. It also has a large flock of feral parakeets, which are a distinct subspecies of rose-ringed parakeets. No one is quite sure where they came from, and my attempts to get to the bottom of the question have drawn a blank. Attempts to eradicate them have also been unsuccessful; there are now well over 32000 of them in London alone and they have spread as far north as Edinburgh. The birds of prey seem to enjoy the unsuspecting prey, at least, and being bright green they are easer to spot in the winter than the dull grey pigeons.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock Holmes</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>Eurus turned the postcard over and stared at the picture on the other side once more. It showed the London skyline against a blue sky smudged with a few clouds and the grey haze of smog. Closer was a startlingly white building, the Royal Naval College Sherlock had mentioned according to the caption on the reverse. In the very foreground, a handful of individuals walked across a wide expanse of green that was just beginning to parch with the summer’s heat, heedless of the straight grey paths that cut across it.</p><p>She read through his message again, noted the precise handwriting, the long, slow strokes as he picked out each word carefully. He’d paused after the admission that he hadn’t managed to solve the question and then returned to the thought of the eradication attempts, but he had resumed soon after. Perhaps someone had distracted him or, equally possible, he simply hadn’t known what to say next. Why he thought she needed to know about these parakeets, though, Eurus couldn’t imagine. She set it down carefully on the desk Mycroft had had provided for her and retreated to the bed to glare at it warily.</p><p> </p><ol>
<li>Tooting Bec Lido</li>
</ol><p>
  <em>The Lido is on Tooting Bec Common, right next to the railway line. The Common also has tennis courts, a cricket pitch and a lake, as well as two cafés. It used to be much bigger, but it’s been protected since 1875 and contains several important rare habitats. Apparently the grasslands are rarer than the more obvious woodland areas. There’s under 30,000 hectares remaining in Britain, and the combination of vegetation and soil composition is very distinctive. Very thoughtful of our killer to drag the victim across it, especially considering the weather we’ve had.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It’s the largest freshwater pool in the country by surface area, and the café does a very passable tea.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>She added the newest postcard to the growing stack, shuffled carefully into place between the Art Deco of Surbiton Station and the grandeur of the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Victoria. It was only a small collection yet, less than half the alphabet represented, and scattered across the city in no discernible pattern. Eurus had scoured the paper, which Dear Mycroft so kindly permitted her, but to no avail save for one mention of a case that may have been related to Sherlock’s visit to Bow. This time, though, he had referred to the case explicitly. A murder on the heath. Eurus shuffled the deck, pulled one out at random, and wondered.</p><p> </p><ol>
<li>The Radcliffe Camera, Oxford</li>
</ol><p>
  <em>Dear Eurus,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I always appreciate an excuse to visit the Bodleian Library. The Camera is quite magnificent, and entirely conducive to quiet research without distractions. Of course most of the archive is now digitised, but never the parts I find I need. The weather is nice, I suppose, and no one is breathing down my neck which always makes a pleasant change. And yet again, the Victorian medical researchers were quite thorough despite their obliviousness. How one could reach these conclusions with the evidence so clear in front of them I can’t imagine, but they hadn’t yet considered that water could be killing people, so one must make allowances, apparently.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p> </p><p>This was different, and didn’t fit on the map of London that Eurus had wheedled out of one of her guards. That Mycroft had sent for her when she’d tried. She tapped it against the palm of her hand and glared at the map, then glanced back over the text again and this time the words themselves sank in. Sherlock was in Oxford. He had left London. He never left London. But his research had taken him away from the city to look at… something. Something early. The source of Cholera was identified in 1854, so if it was Victorian research prior to that there was a seventeen-year window. Whose work, on what? Eurus read through it again and smiled. The weather was nice.</p><p> </p><ol>
<li>Shakespeare and Company, Paris</li>
</ol><p>
  <em>Dear Eurus,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The weather here is dreadful, especially for crossing the city so often. We can’t all spend our lives tucked away by a warm fire with a book, alas. Paris is beautiful though, what I can see of it. I think you’d like it. Please don’t try to find out.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock.</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>Something in her chest kicked at the last sentence, and Eurus shoved the postcard back through the slot towards the guard who’d brought it in. Hurried writing with a cheap, disposable pen. A biro, something he carried with him, or the one he was lent in the shop where he bought the card. She itched to compare them, to line pens up and write lines upon lines until she knew. Not enough data. Handwriting messy, though, the last sentence an afterthought. She scrambled to grab it back and read it over once more. Grease on the edge from his thumb. Case closed because he never ate when he was working, so was this the last thing he did before he boarded the Eurostar? Called into a bookshop to buy a postcard for her and a book for… someone. The little girl, perhaps? Or for Mummy, to lay it across the gulf carved between them. She kept it this time, mulishly all the same, and pinned it to the wall next to the Radcliffe Camera. The grouping bothered her. She needed a bigger map.</p><p> </p><ol>
<li>The Empire State Building, New York</li>
</ol><p>
  <em>Dear Eurus,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’m not sure it’s even possible to know New York, and I don’t intend to try. It’s currently cold, grey and unpleasant, despite its proximity to the sea. I’m used to the thermal inertia being modulated by the Gulf Stream as it passes Britain, but New York has no such advantage. The winters are bitter, the summers stultifying. It would be interesting to conduct an analysis of the chemical makeup of the air on any street in the city, but only from a safe distance of several hundred miles.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I have a few more days here, at least, before I can return to London, and I will miss it in a strange way. Everything is new, nothing is predictable. I wish you were here to see it too.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yours,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>Cheap ballpoint but written slowly, the smells of the city streets all but faded from the card. A smear across the iconic tower said it had been written at a table where food was served, perhaps outside a café or in a bar. Not a case if he was eating, but was he? Not enough data. ‘I wish you were here’. She read the date on the postmark and looked through the glass walls. “I need…”</p><p> </p><ol>
<li>One she sent back</li>
</ol><p>There’s a church covered in snow, windows lit gold from the candles within, and a red-robed choir parade through the street between dry-stone walls past a cheerful robin and the gaily decorated houses. Smoke rises from the chimneys and wreaths hang from the doors. Inside a cheerful Christmas rhyme brings wishes of the season, and a careful, elegant hand adds,</p><p>
  <em>“Dear Sherlock,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I wish I’d been there too.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Come and see me for your birthday?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Your sister,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Eurus.”</em>
</p>
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